Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (331 page)

“Must a man be betrayed in his own house,” he said, with sarcasm and fear in his tones, “and then put to the arbitrament of swords? This is contrary to all precedent. Guilt and flight go hand in hand.”

“Not when poltroonery will not pursue,” Lady Eshetsford said, with a bitter contempt.

“Oh, now the bitch bays,” Sir John answered.

“Wait you, madam, till your gallants be gone!”

He drew his head back like a child from an extended spoon of medicine; the fine point of Mr. Bettesworth’s sword seemed to tickle his Adam’s apple. And Mr. Bettesworth trusted himself to speak.

“On your knees, Knight,” he said, with a cold 3

fury. “If you raise a hand, if you breathe a word...”

Sir John, reeling to the rear, sat down upon the back of Mr. Williamson, who was crawling hind-ways towards the door. He had been put to so many more disagreeable usages, that merely to afford a seat to his patron seemed to him comparatively agreeable, and as long as he could he supported the burden.

Mr. Bettesworth approached nearer, and repeating, “On your knees!” held again his point to the Knight’s throat. Sir John brushed it away petulantly as if it had been a wasp.

“A pretty pass,” he said, “that a wronged husband should adopt the attitude proper to an erring wife!”

At this, first Mr. Williamson’s arms and then his thighs gave way beneath him, and Sir John subsided on to the ground like a general whose horse is killed beneath him.

Mr. Bettesworth twisted away with his point Sir John’s sword, that had fallen to the ground. It dropped near the window with a rusty jingling.

“I perceive,” he said, with a cold humour, “that you can never rise to your knees, so you shall swear sitting.”

“Swear!” said the Knight. “Good Lord, swear!”

“You shall swear that you shall never raise your hand to your wife; you shall never come into her presence without abjectly craving permission, and your bullies and companions never at all. Her name shall never be on your lips in taverns and at your drunken debauches. You shall never share her bed.”

“Damn it all!” the Knight said, “will you take my place? What whorson knave are you to come into my house and dictate how a knight shall live with his wife?”

“I am my lady’s cousin, and, in descent from my uncle, trustee and the head of my family, and I am the best swordsman of the West of England,” Mr. Bettesworth answered. “I take it upon me to alleviate her lot.”

Sir John’s jaw fell. Maria’s eyes had grown wider and wider with admiration behind Mr. Bettesworth’s white back.

“Heaven be praised!” she exclaimed. “Here is a Saint George come to us at last!”

“The family!” Sir John cried out, with a note of woe. “I have been dreading her plaguy family this three year. May not a man use his wife’s body and dissipate her fortune in what wise he will, but a pesky parcel of black-browed families shall burst in on him with swords and cries! I have dreaded this, but I was safe whilst the uncle lived. He was a fellow after my own heart. I am a Parliament man, Knight of the Shire and Custos Rotulorum, and shall a family—”

“Swear!” Mr. Bettesworth said.

“Shall I knock upon my wife’s door before I enter, like a lackey?” Sir John asked. “What if she is in the room with the cupboards where I keep my liquors? Shall I not get drunk when I will in my own house?”

“You shall not knock at a door like a lackey, but you shall send the lackey before you to ask if your presence shall be pleasing to her ladyship. And into my cousin’s presence you shall never come when you are drunk.”

“Then, to be sure, if I am to wait till my presence is pleasing to her, and till I am sober, I shall never come into her presence again. For she has puked at me ever since we were married a fortnight, and I have not been sober since Christmas was a twelvemonth.”

“Swear!” Mr. Bettesworth remarked.

“This indeed,” Sir John said, gazing, fuddled, at the ground, “is divorce
a mensâ et toro,
save that it leaves my wife free and me in nowise. And yet I am not sorry to be rid for ever of her haughty and mewling voice. Yes, I swear it; so she will leave me my ease I will leave her hers. For if she hate me as heartily as I hate her, this will be the first thing that I have done to pleasure her since we were married.”

“Then get you gone till you be sober,” Mr. Bettesworth said.

“‘
Then farewell for ever my honey
,
my dear,’”
the Knight chanted,” for I mean to be drunk all the rest of the year.” He shouted out: “Ho, Partridge! you and Thomas come bear me to my bed.”

“Sir John,” Mr. Bettesworth said, “I trust that you, as a Parliament man and as a Knight of the Shire, will observe your oath. Nor, indeed, do I doubt of it. But of this you may be certain, that if you cause so much as a frown to darken my Lady Eshetsford’s brow, my sword shall be here again at your throat and then it shall not stop outside your skin.”

“Oh, ay, your sword,” Sir John mumbled. “That is the way of the world. To corrupt a man’s wife and then—”

His face became suddenly of a deep purple; he threw up his hands. From the sword-wrist that Mr. Bettesworth had scratched, blood had been running down on to the Knight’s red knuckles. A vein that the sword-point had injured had burst under the pressure of his passion. There issued suddenly a pulsing stream of blood which fell over his shoulder and coat. And after a long pause he opened his eyes and gazed malignantly at Mr. Bettesworth.

“Ay,” he said, “I think by that scratch you have done what you would not have done, having saved my life. So that you shall not for many years stand in my shoes.”

He leered maliciously up at his wife.

“Ay, madam,” he said, “that was very surely a stroke of apoplexy, and had your spark or gallant or lover, or spark’s brother or gallant’s brother or lover’s brother — or whatever he is — not let my blood by scratching me near the wrist, I should as like as not be dead meat by now.”

He stood up upon his legs, the relief from pressure of blood having sobered him.

“Your sword is a tricky instrument,” he said to Mr. Bettesworth. “It cuts both ways, letting out life or death as the case may be.”

Mr. Bettesworth said: “Sir, your very humble servant.” And, still gripping his arm above the punctured wrist, Sir John cursed his way out of the room. He pushed two footmen aside, and when he came to where his hat and wig lay on the floor, kicked them furiously against the skirting-board. Mr. Williamson had reached the door two minutes sooner. Partridge, the lackey, took his place by the sideboard again. The maid, with a basin and a cloth, removed from the polished floor the drops of Sir John’s blood. Tom the footman ceremoniously recovered and carried off Sir John’s sword, and Maria took her place again by Lady Eshetsford’s side.

“You have not found the picture?” Lady Eshetsford said to Maria. Her voice was still touched with the scorn that she had felt for Sir John, but she controlled it so that it attained again to its company falsetto, and she stiffened her movements as etiquette demanded. “Now I remember, I had it placed in the north attic where the servants do not sleep.”

She turned to Mr. Bettesworth, who also had resumed his place at the table, and sat very formal and erect.

“This painter, Hitchcock,” she said, “is a man to whom I have long tried to be a patroness. But he has none of the tricks of his trade. He is not one to sit at your levee whilst your hair is being dressed, along with the musicians and poets and man-milliners and pedlars of virtu. But here in London he inhabits God knows what garret, and he has a little house on my land at Ashford where he keeps a wife and two buxom daughters. He is very round and very snuffy, his wig is as often as not back part to the front, and there depends always from his pocket a muddle of painter’s rags.”

“I have seen the man,” Mr. Bettesworth said. “He has a mind very full of the secrets of his Art. I have never met one who seemed more cautious or secretive. I must needs be very haughty before he would suffer me to approach his pieces with my measure.”

“But now I think his fortune is made,” Lady Eshetsford said. “Half the Town will be buying of his pictures, and I hear that he is to be appointed Painter to the Dilettante Society. So he will paint so many portraits a year. For the Dilettante Society, though they are a drunken and roistering crew, and professed atheists, yet have this virtue, that they present each one his portrait to the Society upon their elections.”

“Madam,” Mr. Bettesworth said, “I am very sorry to hear you speak thus of this Society, for this morning a very civil gentleman — Sir Francis Dashwood — waited upon me and informed me that I — was made a member, and would have me to dine there upon Sunday night.”

“Then you shall see for yourself,” Lady Eshetsford said. “And, indeed, it is so much in the mode of the time to be debauched and an atheist, that you will be no more than a man of good manners if you blaspheme and are for ever in your cups.”

“I trust,” Mr. Bettesworth said, “that I shall never be anything that shall not please your ladyship.”

“And I trust,” her ladyship said, “that I never shall be anything but what shall be invariably pleased with Mr. Bettesworth.”

CHAPTER IV
.

AT a very long table, between his brother and Mr. Jack Williamson, who for the time being was reasonably sober, Mr. Bettesworth sat listening to an oration from a gentleman arrayed in a red cassock — a parody of a preacher’s gown. The table held forty men, nearly all of them young, and nearly all of them at that stage sober, though one young gentleman was pouring a bottle of claret over his forehead in the vain attempt to reach his mouth. The many-coloured line of coats in which blue predominated, — though there were some of purple, and the President wore a long gown of scarlet and ermine like a peer’s robes, — the several sashes of the most noble Order of the Garter, the profusion of gold lace, the enormous dress-wigs minutely curled and falling behind and in front of the shoulders, all these things gave to the speaker’s audience an air of distinction, of decorum, and of solemnity, that madly enhanced the effect of his blasphemous oration. It was as if the House of Peers sat to hear a sermon against the rights of the blood. The speaker had taken for his text: “
And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,’’
and from that starting - point he proceeded to cast a polished ridicule upon the story of the Creation. He mingled it with equally polished obscenities. Sir Francis Dashwood, afterwards Lord le Despencer, was at that date twenty-eight. The most striking of his features were his large violet eyes, that had dark rims round the irises. And his very long, soft, and almost curling eyelashes gave to his glance a shrinking and feminine tenderness, even at moments when, as now, he most displayed hardihood and effrontery. He was reputed to be the most cynically wrong-living young man upon the Town, but he very seldom indulged in liquor to an excess or committed public outrages against the Law, such as were then the fashion, for he preferred to observe and to find humour in the gross excesses of his companions.

The Dilettante Society, of which he was a founder, and of which he was certainly the most moving spirit, was made up of men mostly young, whose qualification was that they should have made the Grand Tour, or that they should at least have visited Italy and have seen its masterpieces. A taste for the Arts of Painting and Sculpture being then one of the distinguishing marks of the aristocracy and gentry, the Society had for its avowed aim the promotion of those Arts. How exactly it proposed to promote them was a matter of some vagueness. Perhaps it came most near to this object in that its members, by a social intercourse, revived the memories and the dissipations of the days when, under the guardianship of complacent and compliant tutors, they had found Italy so pleasant.

Mr. Bettesworth, with his somewhat tenacious mind was coldly but yet earnestly set upon honouring the Arts of his native country. At the very outset the manners and aspect of the company conveyed a distinct chill to him. It is true that round the walls, between the candle sconces, there were hung several Italian pictures. The gavel in the President’s hand and the goblet before him were of silver chased by Benvenuto Cellini. But the very nature of the minutes of the last meeting, that were read by the Secretary from a book bound in scarlet morocco — their nature, and still more the comments with which they were received by members of the Club, — as, for instance:” Resolved that the compliments of the Society be particularly presented to Mr. Bland, along with the information that the Society desires that he should be damned,” which elicited from the Duke of Norfolk and the Honourable Simon Harcourt a volley of remarks as to the said Mr. Bland’s womenkind, — together with the mock solemnity of Secretary, President, Introducer of Guests, and Very Grand Master, — all these things induced in Mr. Bettesworth a feeling of choler and dislike.

He sat, therefore, listening to Sir Francis Dashwood’s sermon with a growing irritation. Sir Francis had waited upon him with his deferential air, his soft and polished manner, and his shrinking eyelashes. Mr. Bettesworth had imagined that this Society was one of serious-minded noblemen intent upon — as Sir Francis said — the promoting of the Fine Arts in England. So that, finding himself in this company of rather lewd men, amongst whom, hitherto, no word of the Fine Arts had yet been uttered, Mr. Bettesworth felt a sudden and profound distrust of his Introducer. He imagined that Sir Francis, with his fine smile and ironical manner, had come merely to fool him, had tricked him — taking advantage of his inexperience in the Town’s ways — into coming to a drinking table under the pretence that it was a learned Society. “For,” as he said to himself, “if he had said to me this was a boosing-ken or a blasphemy shop I should certainly have come, to see the world. But thus to have deceived me is surely an affront over which subsequently he will make merry with his friends.”

In this, however, Mr. Bettesworth did his Introducer an injustice. Sir Francis and the Society considered that merely to meet together as Cognoscenti and men of birth was in itself very greatly to honour any Art. And if the meetings themselves witnessed no particular actions other than those of eating and drinking, that was, as it were, their recompense for the labours of coming together at all. For to dine was surely as meritorious an act of patronage as to permit one’s name to be printed on the dedication page of a book.

The dinner was done, the bottles passed on, the waiters went round the walls snuffing the candles, and amidst incessant jeers and laughter Sir Francis commenced his peroration —

“Mr. President, my Lords and Gentlemen, so much for Creation and the Garden and Eve, and all the rest. But we have seen now upon the Town — and I think there is no man here so backward as not to have seen it — a created garden and a created, serpentless Eve such as no seven days that the world has ever seen, did, could, or shall create. Had the Archangel who bears the name of the Supreme Raphael descended from heaven and used one of his pinion feathers for a brush, he could never have given us such beauty, he could never have given us such grace, he could never have limned for us such flowing limbs, such a languishing look, or such shining ringlets. The painter has chosen to clothe his Eve: thus he shows that though innocent she has knowledge of good and evil...” At this juncture such a babble of appreciative shouts arose from his audience that Sir Francis’s voice was lost. He drank a glass of wine, wiped his lips, smiled, and continued formally: “Gentlemen, it is my privilege — and no prouder privilege has been conferred upon any layman since the King of Spain was permitted to hold the brushes of the great Velasquez — it is my privilege to propose that a new office of this Society be created — that of Painter to the Society of Dilettante, and that the Painter of ‘Celia in her Arbour’ be forthwith elected to that office.”

There was a great uproar of assent whilst this resolution was being put to the meeting, and then the Secretary and the Introducer — the one in a white burnous with a Moor’s turban, the other in sea-green with a sash of gold cloth — having retired momentarily through the door at the end of the hall, dragged in the painter Roger Hitchcock, whom they had kept locked up in a little anteroom.

A short, paunchy man of maybe fifty, he had great spectacles, a very wrinkled face, and a rather
 
ironic expression. His old snuff-coloured coat was very baggy in the pockets; from one of them there depended a long paint-rag. Led by the hand to the top of the table, he was stood beside the — President to receive the message of his election, and he remained blinking at the lines of faces intently and with no sign of perturbation, very much as if he were taking a professional interest in their aspect and seeking to take notes in his memory for a future picture. The President, with his fine clear features, turned sideways to the old painter, and dressed him in terms of eulogy and welcome. Mr. Hitchcock received them with little half-impatient bobs, and, the speech being ended, he sat down, very business-like, in the chair that was placed for him on the President’s right hand. There began immediately an enormous tumult, during which the President whispered in the painter’s ear. As a result, Hitchcock was upon his legs again, leaning , his knuckles upon the table, and holding in one hand the soiled paint-rag, which he had mistaken for his handkerchief.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a little, penetrating voice, that he appeared to snap off into short lengths, “this honour is none of my seeking; making speeches is none of my trade. I was brought here by physical force. Sir Francis Dashwood, the Duke of Norfolk, and Mr. Simon Harcourt burst in on me in my painting-room and forcibly abducted me..

He took a pinch of snuff, waiting for the laughter and cheers to subside, then, still sniffing, he continued composedly —

“Dining and dinners have never entered into my life. They and painting, I have always held, will never agree. But if I am to be hauled here by main force I must needs relent. I am sensible that you have done me a great honour, but I think it is rather to the beauty of my sitter that you have paid a tribute than to the beauty of my performance. Therefore you will not find me unduly puffed up, for I know very well you would rather have that lady sitting at this table than mine own self, and I consider myself to be her deputy only.”

He waved his paint-rag in the air, wiped his nose with it, and sat down suddenly.

“By God! a mighty insolent speech,” Sir Francis Dashwood said to Mr. Bettesworth across the face of Mr. Jack Williamson. “Did ever painter so speak to an assembly of gentlemen?”

“Why, Sir Francis,” Mr. Bettesworth answered coldly, “if the man were indeed dragged here to be made a butt of I think he has spoken very moderately, and the insolence is ours of this Society.”

Sir Francis gazed at him with his large and feminine eyes, his lips smiling.

“A hit,” he said languidly. “I admit that I am hit, for mine was the inspiration to drag the painter here. But you will perceive this is the first thing the Society has done towards promoting the cause of the Fine Arts.”

“I think it would have been better,” Mr. Bettesworth said, “to have left it undone.”

Mr. Simon Harcourt, a pale young man with a particularly large chestnut wig, called at this point, from the bottom of the table —

“Name, name? I move that Mr. Hitchcock be ordered to disclose the name of his ‘Celia.’”

And the Duke of Norfolk echoed: “Ay, let us have the name for a toast.”

“Her name, my lord,” Mr. Hitchcock said dryly, “is Celia.”

“Ay, but her name in the flesh,” the Duke said.

“That I have forgotten,” the painter answered. “Oh, will you keep her all to yourself?” Mr. Simon Harcourt called out. “I thought you had a wife and family?”

“Well, they are hidden down in the country,” the painter said.

Sir Francis said, “Oh! oh! oh!” and then rose to his feet.

“Mr. President,” he said, “I move that the offer of the Painter to the Society be accepted, and that instead of himself this lady be given a perpetual seat at the table.”

“I second that,” Mr. Harcourt called out; “and I will be the one to fetch her here.”

“And I will have the housing of her,” the Duke of Norfolk said.

“No, by God!” Dashwood said, “she shall be mine.”

A gentleman in a scarlet coat said, from the bottom of the table —

“Why, she must fall to the highest bidder.”

“Then it is certain we must have her name,” the Secretary said.

“That you never shall from me,” the painter answered pleasantly.

“Then we must go find her,” Mr. Simon Harcourt exclaimed.

The gentleman in the red coat cried hilariously: “Brava! I bet Mr. Harcourt a thousand pounds against a thousand that I will be the first to find her, provided the painter will keep his mouth shut.” Mr. Harcourt cried: “Done!” And then: “I bet the Duke of Norfolk two thousand pounds against two thousand that I will be the one to fetch her here.”

The Duke of Norfolk said calmly: “Done!” and added, in his low, distinct voice: “I will bet Sir Francis Dashwood three thousand pounds that I will have the housing of her.”

A moment of perturbation moved Sir Francis’s mobile eyebrows. He was tacitly challenged, in the face of all that Assembly, to exceed the Duke of Norfolk both in the amount of his wager and in the feat he should undertake. Then the smile came back to his lips, his glance fell upon Mr. Bettesworth.

“I will bet Mr. Bettesworth four thousand pounds,” he said, with his calm, clear voice, “that if she be of approved and virtuous life, whosoever she be, if she be not already married, I will marry this lady.”

A very strong anger was in Mr. Bettesworth’s heart. He cried out —